Ice on the Millpond

You may have noticed that my posts are getting fewer and further between. And, now that I'm starting my first full-time, grown up job, I'll be writing even less. I expect this will be my last full-length post for a while, although I have a load of fantastic local artists that I'll be drip feeding you on the run up to Christmas!
   So by way of an apology here's a slightly longer story/fairytale. Yeah, it is actually quite long. I mean, its the longest piece of fiction I've ever finished. But I like to think that it's moderately entertaining, so hopefully you'll enjoy it! Look out for my short posts in future and thanks everyone who's commented, given me advise or encouragement, liked on facebook or even just read something I've written :)

Ice on the Millpond

There was once a young man who took an elven maiden for his wife. She fell in love with him because he stood as tall and straight as a tree, had handsome eyes of green, gold and brown and he was gentle and kind.

   He loved her too because, although she was ordinary in the eyes of other elves, she was beautiful beyond measure to him. Her autumn coloured hair fell below her waist, her face was as lovely as the sun shining through the willow leaves and he was impressed by her speed and agility, in which he had never seen her equal.

   Of course, their parents disapproved. The young man’s mother and father did not want him to form an attachment to one of the Fae Folk, knowing that there was truth in the tales of their strange ways and their fickleness. The elf’s parents did not want her to leave them for a mortal man who would turn to dust in a hundred years. But, with this thought in mind, they resigned themselves to wait for their daughter to return to them for good and so they blessed the marriage. As did the young man’s parents who could see that the attachment was formed and that their son would not be swayed.

   The couple were married in October and the young man’s parents gave them a house of their own to live in. The elf’s parents gave them a dowry of beautiful wooden chairs and tables carved with patterns of flowers, trees and animals, and a fine silver sword as a wedding gift for their son-in-law.

   The couple moved into their house and at first they were very happy. They were pleased with one another’s company and the freedom that living away from their parents afforded them. And if occasionally the young man noticed the lamps glowing with a greenish hue or unusual birds in their garden he brushed such thoughts aside. He had married an elf after all and she would, of course, attract strangeness to their ordinary little town.

   Each day the young man would go out to work and the elf would go wandering in the woods, foraging for mushrooms and hunting rabbits and deer. Soon the elf maiden began to long for the company of other women but the women of the town avoided her and her neighbours never answered her dinner invitations. They thought her unnatural and dangerous.

   Winter set in and the houses of the town were coated in ice. Women baked sweet pies for each other and piled more wood on the stoves. Men set out to work with a hot baked potato in their pocket, their noses red beneath their caps. Children waited in anticipation for snow.

   The frost formed beautiful patterns on the windows of the newlywed couple’s house, like flowers and trees blooming silver-white (the ice on his neighbour’s windows looked formless and flat in comparison but he did not notice). Smoke from the vigorously stoked fires drew charcoal scrawls on the sky and the millpond froze over. The elf would often walk by the pond and think that if the ice were removed it would be like an enormous blue coin. But she walked alone and became more restless and lonely than ever.

   One day, she walked down to the mill pond to find the ice broken into a hundred jagged floes. A thin layer of water had already frozen between the shards and she looked about the banks for the body of some unfortunate child that might have fallen in. She found nothing unusual except for two little islands, side by side in the centre of the pond, which she had never seen before.

   Suspicious and wary, she quickly went to find the miller. His ruddy-face darkened when she told him of the broken ice and even more when he heard about the two islands.

   “You say you looked for a body?” he asked, mildly impressed at her grit, “there won’t be a body now even if someone did fall in. I’ll tell you what broke the ice. It was Jenny Greenteeth, a troll of the worst description. We ought to tell everyone to stay away from the millpond, for if any child gets near it, out will stretch her terrible long arms and that little one’ll be gone in a flash.”

   “But what are the islands?” asked the elf.

   “The top of her head and the hump of her back. You tell the women, I’ll tell the men, then we’ll decide what ought to be done.”

 The women were reluctant to believe the elf but to ignore such warnings would have been foolish indeed. That evening the men of the town gathered to discuss what would be done.

   “Kill ‘er I recon,” growled the blacksmith taking a swig of beer.

   “That’s obvious,” said the miller, “the question is how.”

   “We could wait round the edge of the pond until she surfaces, then kill her with a spear or arrow,” said the butcher, lovingly fingering a small knife he used for gutting rabbits.

   The men nodded and grunted their agreement

   The elf’s husband listened carefully to this conversation. It struck him as an exceedingly dangerous plan; what if Jenny reached out an arm and dragged one of them in before they could kill her? It would be difficult to see her through the ice until her claws were already closing on your ankle. But he was neither old or experienced enough to contradict the other men and so he remained silent.

   “When shall we do it?” said the blacksmith.

   “Tonight!” crowed a toothless old man, “when the moon is up. She won’t surface in the daylight, but the moon is soothing to her. We’ll creep up in a circle, quiet as foxes.”

   “Each of us with a bow and arrow!” cried the bakers son, quivering with excitement.

   “She’ll be dead by the morn,” said the inn keeper.

   They got up and left to fetch their weapons.

   The women were also discussing the troll, in the house of the richest lady in the town. The lady in question was sat closest to the fire, embroidering in a show of apparent decorum. Punk, punk, punk went the needle; she imagined each punk went through Jenny Greenteeth’s heart. The other women sat around on stools and chairs and the poorer women on the floor. The elf sat in a draughty corner alone, listening intently. Glittering frost flowers blossomed on the window beside her.

   “What will they decide?” asked the butcher’s wife.

   “They will decide to kill her of course,” said an elderly widow, “the question is how.”

   “And if they form a foolish plan? A dangerous one?” asked the butcher’s wife fearfully, “what then?”

   “Then,” said the lady of the house, crisply, “we allow them to go through with it. They will not shame themselves for our sake. God willing, they will succeed.”

   At that moment a small voice was heard at the door.

   “Mama?”

   The lady of the house got up to return her child to bed, lightly placing a hand on the boy’s hair.

   “But what if the men fail?” insisted the butcher’s wife once the lady had left the room.

   “Then they shall think of something else,” said the elderly widow impatiently, “do you or do you not trust you husband and the other men to protect us?”

   “What are you implying?” said the butcher’s wife. Everybody knew what was being implied, the butcher and his wife hadn’t trusted one another for years.

   “Let’s hear their plan,” said the washer woman softly. She was sat on the floor leaning against the wall, her aprons spread about her and her legs sprawled out beneath, “let them decide something for themselves and when they tell it to us we’ll judge the wisdom of it. Even though they won’t shame themselves for the sake of the women, each man will listen to his wife.”

   “Wise words indeed,” said the lady of the house who had been stood in the doorway, hidden by shadows, “and now, to bed. We shall hear their plan in the morning.”

   The elf wished they could take more action but by now she knew that it would not sit well with the other women, so she kept quiet. The washer woman had spoken well.

As the women went their separate ways the first snow began to fall. The road home was slippery with black ice, and when the elf returned, late though it was, her husband was not in. The windows were dark and the hearth cold.

   She had assumed that they would make a decision quickly, and the inn keeper, who liked to go to bed before midnight, would have sent them home a while ago. The elf put her boots back on, wrapped her fur-lined cloak about herself and left the house again. She went first to the inn but it was empty and no light shone in the windows upstairs. Then she went as quickly as she could over the ice to the richest lady’s house. She raised her fist to knock but stopped, lowered it and instead ran to the washer woman’s house. She felt sure that the washer woman would be a better ally.

   As she’d hoped, the washer woman donned a cloak and admitted her own worry at her husband’s failure to come home. Then the pair, slipping on the ice and occasionally supporting one another, returned to the inn. The men’s foot prints in the new snow were almost hidden but the group seemed to have been headed for the mill, so the elf and the washer woman set out again with a chill in their hearts.

   The washer woman could hardly keep up with the elf whose long hair flew behind her like a coppery pennant in the lamplight. As they approached the mill pond they could just see the silhouettes of men spread out around it in a wide circle. They crept nearer and put out the lamp but the women didn’t dare interrupt them lest Jenny Greenteeth should be alerted to their presence. They could only watch with trepidation.

   No moon shone that night. The sky was smothered by clouds and the snow which fell to earth was whipped about by the wind in such a way that the night grew dimmer still. Only a shadow of light remained by which the men strained to see the trolls quick arm, for they did not dare to light a lantern. The surface of the mill pond was rendered utterly opaque by scattered snowflakes. The men drew closer to the pond, the circle tightening like a knot. But it was tightening around an eel, thought the elf fearfully, because at any moment the monster might slip its noose and attack.

   The first crack was quiet and perhaps only the elf, with her sensitive ears, heard it. It was the sound of a fist breaking thin ice. The second crack was sickeningly loud and combined with a great splash, which was then followed by the screams and cries from the remaining men. From the gap in the circle, the elf judged that someone had been pulled beneath the ice.

   She did not waste a moment but ran swiftly to the bank. The men only stood by shouting and nothing could be seen the beneath the surface of the pond; it was a cold ocean of dancing ice floes. Nevertheless she shrugged off her cloak, took her knife in hand and dived in.

   The water felt like blades against her skin. It was very dark and quiet. She strained her eyes to see Jenny Greenteeth for she had expected an attack from the troll as soon as she entered the water but none came. Her eyes adjusted quickly and the pool seemed far deeper than she had guessed, ribbons of weed licked her ankles and as she looked down she could just make out the tangle of limbs that was Jenny and her victim.

   The elf kicked downwards into the darkness and tugged at what she hoped was a man’s booted leg, but she felt fingers tighten around her wrist and sharp nails dig into her skin. Without stopping to think or decide whether the grip was friend or foe she slashed at it with her knife. Jenny Greenteeth promptly loosened hold but she struck out at the elf’s face with her other hand. Despite being blinded by pain and blood the elf slashed again, this time in the direction of the locks of pond weed that were the trolls hair. The knife made contact and a terrible cry echoed through the water.

   The elf still clutched the man’s booted ankle and she kicked blindly towards where she hoped the surface lay. As soon as her head broke through the ice, strong arms reached out and lifted her clear of the water. She had let go of the man but he too was caught up and dragged onto the frozen bank.

   She felt someone wrap her own cloak tightly around her and the voice of her husband asking whether she was alright, could she stand? Why was her face covered in blood?

   “I’m fine,” she murmured, “fine. Jenny scratched me.”

   The young man held her close and began to walk her home.

   “You were so brave,” he said over and over, “foolhardy, but brave.”

The next morning she was confined to bed.

   Her face had been cleaned but still bore three great scratches across her eye and cheek that the doctor said would scar. Jenny Greenteeth remained in the pond but she hid deep beneath the water, licking her wounds and mouthing evil curses, waiting and wondering darkly what would happen next.

   The man that the elf had saved was the bakers’ son. Whether Jenny had selected the slightest and youngest of the group on purpose or by accident only she knew, but if the elf had not been close by he certainly wouldn’t have lived; elves can hold their breath for longer than men, and their eyes are sharper in the dark. And so, while the elf lay in bed being fed chicken broth by her proud husband, the women of the town scolded the men for being so foolish (and none more than the bakers wife!), and the men puzzled over what to do next. Any new plan must be more carefully thought out but must also be swiftly implemented, because everyone’s greatest fear was that Jenny Greenteeth would grow hungry enough to leave the pond.

   The washer woman visited the elf and her husband several times over the next few days to relay the news that no decision had yet been made. Every time she explained some plan or scheme that had been suggested the elf shook her head vehemently. Each plan was rejected by the townsfolk anyway.

   But while the elf lay in bed she was not idle. She had her father’s bestiary in her lap and she read every passage concerning trolls. The book was very old with thick brown pages and crude drawings, and wherever it lay open the cat tried to sit on it so the elf was forever pushing the animal away gently. (That was another odd thing; her husband had noticed a marked change in the cats behaviour since he had moved in with his wife, it had grown more affectionate and, remarkably, it no longer took such pleasure in clawing his hands. But he simply put it to the back of his mind.)

The elf learned enough to begin to form a plan. She asked her husband why nobody had considered luring Jenny Greenteeth out of the pond.

   “Well,” he said, looking somewhat surprised, “she might kill us I suppose.”

   “But exposed to the wind and weather I think she would be at her weakest,” said the elf. For although the snow had lessened, it was colder than ever.

   “What are you suggesting?” asked her husband slowly.

   She told him, and he said he would sleep on it.

“It might work,” admitted the blacksmith.

   “Ain’t no skin off our backs if it doesn’t,” added the miller.

   “We could do with the firewood though,” grumbled the innkeeper.

   “We can compensate whoever provides the sheep,” said the elf’s husband quickly.

   They were huddled in the inn beside the fire. The flames were smoky and didn’t seem to warm them much, perhaps because the wood was damp. Everyone’s wood had been damp that winter, despite the crisp, dry weather. Green mould had crept out from under the bark, like algae spreading over a well.

   The men of the town accepted the elf’s plan with surprising ease, perhaps because no better plan had yet been discovered.

   The young man continued, “the snow has stopped too, which should make it easier.”

   “I’ve got an old ewe,” said someone.

   “Might as well get started then,” said the butcher, “there’s ten or so trees chopped down that haven’t yet been made into firewood.”

   Every man leapt up and leant a hand because each wondered in his heart: how much longer will Jenny stay in the pond?

   And beneath the ice, brown with old leaves and frozen in a crazy mosaic of splinters and shards, the old troll crouched in the mud and waited, muscles tense, secret spells muttering, she waited for the wind to drop.

It was so late at night that it was almost early in the morning. The men crept from their houses. The women sat up by the embers of the fire and prepared towels and hot water. Just in case. The children lay wide awake with excitement, because their fathers were out troll-hunting.

   Jenny heard the shuffling footsteps on the edge of the pond because the wind had died down, and suspicious though she was, she was by now hungry enough to risk anything. She listened closely and her long, knobbly hand crept closer to the surface of the ice, until crack! up it shot and her fist closed on nothing! Again she heard those shuffling noises on the other side of the pond. She wouldn’t be fooled this time, without warning her fist punched through the ice and snatched at the noise but again there was nothing!

   Jenny howled in frustration and her whole terrible, green body broke through the ice and was up on the bank before you could say Greenteeth.

   The ewe was before her but further from the pond than she had guessed. She lunged for it and it bleated and ran in terror from her, away from the pond and into the trees. She could see it well enough to catch it quickly, black as it was against the white snow. Her appetite was now so voracious that it had overpowered her mind and drove her on mercilessly, until the poor creature was dead and the best of its meat torn away by her ravenous green teeth.

   Her sense returned a little and the troll sat back on her haunches and looked around. There appeared to be no one about so she pulled a tooth from the sheep’s skull for protection. She began to drag the remains of the animal back to the millpond but when she reached it she found, to her dismay, that the whole thing was covered in logs; if she ever found a way into the pond between them she would certainly never find a way out once they froze in place. She clutched the sheep’s tooth realising, too late, that she had been tricked.

   Now they came for her. They were not yet close but Jenny Greenteeth could sense them hiding amongst the trees that ringed the pond, could imagine their terrified breath and their sweat. She bared her teeth in a grin: well, she thought, they would soon see what a mistake they had made.

   She spat on the sheep’s tooth and rubbed it with her thumb, mumbling words her mother had taught her until she saw the snow begin to lift up from the ground in flurries. The men cried out in alarm when the branches of the trees began to creak and sway, though there was no wind, and screamed when roots broke through the frozen earth and ensnared their ankles.

   Jenny chuckled with delight, content to watch their displeasure for a while, until she grew bored and the gnawing hunger drew her attention once more. She softly began to approach the nearest struggling man.

   He saw her coming and called out to his fellows, and tore in vain at the roots binding his ankles. She crept forward slowly, on all fours, savouring his fear even more for the fact that she could clearly see the sweat on his brow and blood on his chin where he had bitten his own tongue. He hacked at his bonds with a knife and Jenny scowled and moved a little faster.

   A little faster but not fast enough to reach the shade of the trees by the time the rim of the sun rose above the hills. The first pale rays of dawn touched the troll’s skin and drew from her lips a howl that could be heard for miles around.

   Her intended victim, the miller, finally succeeded in freeing himself but when he looked for Jenny Greenteeth all he saw was a stone statue in her likeness.

The trolls spell lifted as soon as she turned to stone. The men recovered themselves and returned to the town, helping one another and smiling, laughing even, in disbelief. Each man was glad to come home to his wife and family (even the butcher) but no man more so than the husband of the elf. He took her in his arms kissed her three scars and her autumn hair and told her that her plan had worked.

   After that winter the men of the town and the washerwoman treated the elf as one of their own. She had earned her place among the men with courage but her place among the women was earned with courage of different kind, and it took another nine months for the other women to accept her. When the elf’s child was finally born he was loved and doted upon by a hundred aunts.

   And each summer, the willows hung green and gold over the millpond, which remained empty save for fish and water-boatmen. And each winter, frost bloomed like silver flowers on the windows and the ice on the millpond remained perfect and unbroken.